An English translation of Yoani Sánchez's blog Generación Y, from Havana, Cuba

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Intermediaries of Control

The Tenth Congress of the National Small Farmers Association concluded yesterday at a very critical time for the Cuban agricultural sector. While on TV they broadcast the long sessions of a closed-door meeting, in our homes the worry continues about how to find and pay for what we put on our plates. Rice, the daily companion on our tables – indispensable for many, boring for others – is the latest product to be added to the scarcity list. In a country where most people feel they haven’t eaten if they don’t have at least a few spoonfuls of this grain, its absence becomes a source of despair and cause for alarm.

After so many calls for efficiency, the announcement – with great fanfare – of the distribution of vacant land, and speeches sprinkled with calls to work on the farms, the current result is that in the last year agricultural production fell by 13% and livestock production by 3.1%. Clearly slogans and platitudes in the style of “beans are more important than guns” or “we need a complete turnaround for the land,” don’t translate into food. So what is happening? How is it possible that an island covered in fertile soil is full of people anxiously waiting for a few malangas, some bananas, some yuccas. Why has pork become a delicacy that we can only enjoy once or twice a month at an exorbitant and abusive price. How have they managed to relegate many of our tastiest fruits to plates in an album of things that are extinct. Nationalization, control and centralization have led us here and I’m afraid that we are now trying to dig ourselves out of the hole with the same methods that put us in it.

The solutions will not come because a call comes from a military uniform for maximum sacrifice and sowing the earth “for the fatherland.” Nor will it emerge from a conference led by those who, for a long time now, have not bent their backs even to weed the earth. I hope to read in the final report of this agricultural event the will to actually put an end to all the absurd restrictions. Given the gravity of the food situation I thought they were going to stop demonizing and criminalizing the middleman, without whom boxes of tomatoes will not reach the market. We will glimpse the solution to the lack of productivity when they tell us that the farmers can sell their all their products directly to the population – yes, paying taxes of course – but without going through the “droit de seigneur” imposed on them by the State. If they are not allowed to freely buy agricultural implements, to decide what crops to plant, and how to invest the money they earn from their sales, all that will remain will be the minutes of the conference – one more held without major effects on the furrows or on our plates.

116 thoughts on “Intermediaries of Control”

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Castrofascism is always trying to associate journalists job with political and even penal issues like the thug curbelo does in this case….. journalist work is to inform and they get paid for do that…….. what yo have to do (if you like so much FOIA and other freedom of information institutions) is to go to the public records where those 14 (not 5 but 14 criminals) criminals acts and recorded trial sessions are stored and learn there the confesions of the crimes made by 5 self and the the other 9 criminals…… go there and learn they are common criminals in a mafia like assosiation for cause the death to other people and to perform terrorist acts that could be used for accusing exile cubans……. that’s the true easy to find.
Here is the real histori os the 5 spies:

Objective of espionage network in jail now in USA.

The civilian targets have been identified as follows: Penetration of exile organizations to accomplish a campaign of disinformation, confusion, animosity and disunion among targeted groups. Another objective was to encourage and to facilitate the commission of hostile actions against Cuba in violation the Neutrality Act of the United States. Also, alleged was the sending of threatening letters to members of Congress impersonating members of Cuban exile organizations. It has not been reported that the 10 had committed any act of violence against the US, although there are documents that mention the preparation of terrorist acts against US Air Force bases in the US. ( 5 )

U.S. government — through Radio and TV Martí — had secretly paid tens of thousands of dollars to journalists in Miami, who, during the politically-charged prosecution of the Five, published provocative articles about Cuba and against the Five.

#110
Jose Marti -” … was an ignorant”-.
-“Socialism is not an ideology”-
“Only a stupid retard can say that”
Good one … keep them comming, the more you talk, the more you show who & what you are.
There is no need for discussion w/you … since you do yourself jsutice on yuour own.
Keep up the good work!!!

Well thug, you presume to be literated and to know so well contemporary philosophy……… can you put aside for a second your irrational offensive language and make a supreme effort with your disfunctional and single solitary neuron and tell us why marxism has never survived in any country and why all “communists” countries has ended married with international capitalism and transformed in wild capitalists countries….. including Cuba???????
If capitalism is so bad as you state it is no normal to happen!!!!

And using your other alter ego, you confused little mental retard, you quote someone who is a symbol to you and your opponents.

And all of you are wrong. See, Marti’ may have been a lttle better educated than even you are (you should be ashamed of yourself for that), but he was an ignorant.

Socialism is not an ideology.

Only a stupid retard can say that.

There you go. Now even you should know who and what you are.

By the way when will you ever contribute anything intelligent to the actual theme of your, sorry “Yoani” posts?

Other than your immense stupidity and ideolgycal bullshit in no way connected to the thoughts you under the “Yoani” pretext are offering here. Because, as we know from her own words, the internet is hard to come by and it costs a lot of money.

And Yoani seems to have it under her fingers 24/7. That must cost a lot of money, hey? And she is still free, instead of rotting in some prison where she should have been looong ago for what she herself said is a crime in Cuba for which one goes into a dungeon for a very long time.

It’s a rhetorical question. Everything I ask of you moron is rhetorical because you cannot offer any arguments. Way beyond you. That is why your posts are so short. “thug” and “castrofascists”, and you are spent. Gone.

Just as a real luser is. Debating beyond crude few words you had mastered so far in your sordid and empty life is a no can do.

But you can wank, hank, yubano in your mental fraudster way a lot. Hey, I bet you are writting from some penintentiary institution in the usa! That would explain the access to the internet and your 24/7 presence. And all those aliases you are using to create the feeling of multitude…

Dear Marx and Engelsd…I could go belting your arse forever. It’s fun.

But i have life and family who mean a lot more than you so you’ll have to wait for my next response.

Feel free to spill more crap while I am away. No one expects you to say anything smart anyway, so give it all you’ve got. (use the dictionary, to enrich your poor vocabulary…)

106 from a fraudster, who wants himself to believe he is not alone. I suggested long time ago to try a dictionary to diversify a little and enlarge your poor vocabulary (thugs and castrofascism are the only words you seem to remember).

Sounds bizarre that someone with so little culture, so much ignorance and so little brain dares to talk about “arguments” when the only thing you can produce is a handful of recycled “words” you have heard in your local “we hate castros” church.

Yeah, losing an argument against the smarter by far lefties must hurt a primitive wrong-whinner like yourself.

Go, write more of “thughs” and “castrofascism”.

Will make you feel better, hopefully. Smarter, never. Just a little bit better until another leftie kicjk your ignorant arse hard.

As if that is a difficult task with anyone like yourself. Your history is full of crimes and terrorist acts you now are accusing others of committing.

Did not your other boss said, “those who are innocent of any crime cast the first stone”?

How dare you to question that freak? You are going straight to hell for all your sins…

Dedicated to the defenders of the regime & supporters of the reBolution:

-“Socialist ideology, like so many others has two main dangers. One stems from the confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts and THE OTHER FROM THE ARROGANCE AND HIDDEN RAGE OF THOSE WHO, IN ORDER TO CLIMB UP IN THE WORLD, PRETEND TO BE FRANTIC DEFENDERS OF THE HELPLESS SO AS TO HAVE SHOULDERS IN WHICH TO STAND”-
-Jose Marti

Again, personal attacks again, …….. this thug do not realize that its incapacity to find arguments can be its disgrace with superiors???????
Please, some one explain to him that he has become a very incovenient person for castrofascism ……. it can be very dangerous for him….. regime does not forget those that make it apear like a defense less bold criminal…….. I don’t know why little damir make me recall Cristinito Hernandez as deffense lawyer!!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA……….. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Personal atacks…… that’s all you can…….. no a single argument, not a single line to try to deny what I wrote…….. I know…… you can’t……. I am very happy because with supporters like you castrofascism is soon out of the little credibility it still has among some ideological retarded that mistakes fascism for socialism!!!!

Castrofascism thugs can’t bring here any prove of terrorism practiced by antifascism cuban fighters but a lot of propaganda and some episodes from the time when cuban nation fighted castrofascism violence with violence….. this is not the case of the cuban nation that can bring thousands of well documented terrorism actions of castrofascism on cubans escaping tyranny, thinking different than tyranny or making oposition to regimen crimes.

And this pathetic cry from someone who insults people who dare to post here things that he doesn’t approve of:

“The matter still the same, ideologues who only know to impose the execution of their ideas on the regular people.
It never surprises me how the vicious & loud they can get when they feel personally threatened on their personal stands.
If they become the recipients of the treatment like they dish out … they cry foul; if they are called to the table to account for it … they pass on the blame.”

alberticus, the victim… No one loves him. Only his alter-egos, siggie and humper. And maybe the other two nicks, all his…

Which part do not redistribute or post to the web is hard to grasp, you bandits? Uncivilised bunch of terrorists. Lowest of the lowest humanoids polluting this little planet with your useless existencies and unsavoury, violent ideologies. I sent an email to the authors. They may even shut this site down if they choose so. After all, it is only fair to disable the crooks and thieves. That is how even in the usa things work.

Post 93, from teh usual party-liner siggie the fraud.
The subject of the article is not your deviant nazist political orientation. You have made that aspect of your sordid life cleat. You support Miami-based murderers and terrorists, we get that. The point of your empty existence is that aside from repeating the words of others (tireless copy and paste of other people’s articles, a violation of their copyright by the way – that makes you a thief) you’ve got squat to comment on what even your Yoani is writing about (that being you and the other two losers hiding behind a couple of other nicks).

You are using these pages for a self-promotion and a billboard for your outdated and terrorist intents.

All three “soldiers” that you losers think you are can kiss each other culo and hope for a positive outcome. But from there only one outcome comes out.

I thought you should know that, so that you are ready when the shit starts pouring in, as opposed to out of, your criminal mouth.

See, you haven’t got anything intelligent and valid to add to any debate over and about Cuba. Only your immense hatred. Pointless, senseless and quite idiotic, and still just the hatred.

Your lives are very empty and shallow. One-sided and closed to what makes the real democracy work: compromise, civilised approach and openess to discussion.

That is why you are just a bunch of bitter and failed immigrants with no future.